Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape

West coast, Navy SERE Insignia

SERE, an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, is a U.S. military program that provides personnel, Department of Defense civilians and contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills and the military code of conduct. Established by the Air Force at the end of the Korean War, it was extended during the Vietnam War to the Army and Navy. Most of its students, however, are still aircrew.

The SERE uniform patch

The SERE patch is said to have the following symbolic significance: The color green represents freedom; the patch is halved with a yellow strip to signify that survival, evasion, resistance and escape all require caution, with the knife the basic survival tool; the severed barbed wire represents captivity but freedom regained; the word 'tiger' in Chinese alludes to the Here be dragons/tigers legend found on early maps; finally, the black surround honors symbolically those who have given their lives in service of country.

Levels

SERE training takes place at four levels:

• Level A: Entry level training. These are the Code of Conduct mandatory classes taken by all at induction (recruit training and OCS). All service personnel get this basic training annually.
• Level B: For those operating or expected to operate forward of the division rear boundary and up to the what's known as the forward line of own troops or FLOT. Normally limited to flightcrew of the army, air force, navy and marine corps. Level B focuses on survival and evasion, with resistance in terms of initial capture. Because of reports of captured British sailors being broken easily as a result of lack of resistance training, the US Air Force now requires all aircrew to receive Level B SERE training. By 2008 the effectiveness of this aspect of air force training was being questioned by some, now consisting as it does, they allege, of "an online course which, with reading, videos and quizzes, takes 3-4 hours to complete."
• Level C: For troops at a high risk of capture and whose position, rank or seniority make them vulnerable to greater than average exploitation efforts by any captor. Level C focuses on resistance in terms of prison camps and serious military interrogation.
• Level D: For aircrews, but more recently phased out; what would have been SERE-D students in future undergo SERE-C training at Fairchild (see below).

Service schools

Air Force

The main air force SERE training center is at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington; training for medical aircrew happens at Brooks City-Base, Texas. The air force conducts arctic survival training at Eielson AFB, Alaska, and parachute water survival training at NAS Pensacola, Florida.

SERE training was at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs from the late 1960s until 1995, at which time the resistance/escape element of the course was abolished (see Controversies below), leaving the survival and evasion classes in a program called Combat Survival Training (CST). The academy discontinued CST entirely in 2005, but has more recently announced the reinstatement of the program, including some portions of resistance training, in summer 2008.

Army

The army's two SERE schools are at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Rucker, Alabama. The former is run by the army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, or USAJFKSWCS. The program began in 1981 under the supervision of LTC James "Nick" Rowe, a special forces officer who suffered under North Vietnamese captors for 62 months before managing to escape. SERE at USAJFKSWCS, a 19-day intensive, also serves as a phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course, or Q course. It happens 25 miles southwest of Fort Bragg, at Camp Mackall.

The Fort Rucker SERE school is at the Army Aviation Warfare Center and serves the entire army. Its 21-day course, one of several prerequisites for would-be pilots wishing to do what are known as initial entry Rotary Wing courses, is designed mainly for student pilots and aircrew.

Navy/Marine Corps

The Navy and Marine Corps SERE level C training is held at NAS Brunswick, Maine and at the Navy Remote Training Site, Warner Springs, administered by NAS North Island, both near San Diego, California. The Marine Corps also conducts SERE level B training at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport CA, and at the North Training Area Camp Gonsalves, Okinawa, Japan.

Controversies

1995 U.S. Air Force Academy scandal

One of the U.S. Air Force's SERE training programs was conducted at the United States Air Force Academy from the late 1960s until 1995. Because a large number of pilots and other aircrew members graduated from the academy, it was more efficient for the Air Force to send all cadets through SERE training while they were still at the academy. Cadets would normally complete the training during the summer between their fourth-class (freshman) and third-class (sophomore) years. A number of selected second-class (junior) and first-class (senior) cadets would serve each year as SERE training cadre under the supervision of enlisted Air Force SERE instructors.

As a result of POWs' experiences during Operation Desert Storm, sexual assault resistance was added to the SERE curriculum. However, some of the training scenarios allegedly were taken too far by SERE cadet members at the academy during practical portions of the program. In 1995, the ABC television news program 20/20 reported that as many as 24 male and female cadets in 1993 had allegedly been sexually assaulted at the Academy during SERE training. One of the cadets sued the government, which eventually settled for a reported $3 million in damages.

As a result of the scandal, the SERE program at the Academy was reduced to the survival and evasion portions only, and called Combat Survival Training (CST). All graduates going on to aircrew positions were then required to attend the resistance portion of the training at Fairchild Air Force Base before reporting to an operational flying unit. The CST program was discontinued entirely in 2004. The Air Force Academy is currently preparing for the return of the SERE program in the summer of 2008. The curriculum of the revived program will contain some resistance elements, but will not contain sexual assault resistance.

Use of techniques in interrogation

In July 2005 an article in The New Yorker magazine alleged that psychologists who help direct the SERE curriculum have been advising the military at Guantanamo Bay and other sites on interrogation techniques.

The SERE program's chief psychologist, Colonel Morgan Banks, issued guidance in early 2003 for the "behavioral science consultants" who helped to devise Guantánamo's interrogation strategy although he has emphatically denied that he had advocated the use of counter-resistance techniques used by SERE instructors to break down detainees. The New Yorker notes that in November, 2001 Banks was detailed to Afghanistan, where he spent four months at Bagram Air Base, "supporting combat operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters".

In June 2006 an article on Salon.com, an online magazine, confirmed finding a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Act. A March 22, 2005, sworn statement by the former chief of the Interrogation Control Element at Guantánamo said SERE instructors taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba. The article also claims that physical and mental techniques used against some detainees at Abu Ghraib are similar to the ones SERE students are taught to resist.

According to Human Rights First, the interrogation that lead to the death of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush involved the use of techniques used in SERE training. According to the organization "Internal FBI memos and press reports have pointed to SERE training as the basis for some of the harshest techniques authorized for use on detainees by the Pentagon in 2002 and 2003." [1]

On June 17, 2008, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times reported that the senior Pentagon lawyer Mark Schiffrin requested information in 2002 from the leaders of the Air Force's captivity-resistance program, referring to one based in Fort Belvoir, VA. The information was later used on prisoners in military custody.

See also

• Enhanced interrogation techniques
• Waterboarding
• Resistance to interrogation

External links

• US Army SERE training
• US Navy SERE training (Brunswick)
• US Navy SERE training (Coronado)
• US Air Force SERE training
• New Yorker magazine article about SERE
• Army Regulation for Code of Conduct/ SERE Training
• DOD directive on SERE training (DODI 1300.21)
• DOD directive regarding isolated personnel training (DODI 1300.23)
• A narrative of SERE Instructor School
• Video to promote SERE recruitment